Biasotti: Del Negro is simply a bad coach who needs to go

Associated Press
Vinny Del Negro (left) made some curious decisions during the Clippers’ playoff series against the Grizzlies — like playing veterans like Lamar Odom (right) too many minutes. Del Negro’s time with the Clippers appears to being coming to an end.

The silence must have been eerie for Vinny Del Negro.

In January, at the halfway point of the season, the Los Angeles Clippers were 32-9, tied for the best record in the NBA. And for perhaps the first time since he arrived in L.A. as head coach, no one was calling for Del Negro to be fired.

I hope he enjoyed it while it lasted. Del Negro's time is short now, after his Clippers lost four in a row to the Memphis Grizzlies, turning a 2-0 series lead into a six-game loss.

There's a natural tendency to blame the coach when a team blows a series lead or loses to an underdog. This is lazy and often wrong; for example, I think it would be silly for the Denver Nuggets to overreact to their loss to the Golden State Warriors by firing George Karl.

In Del Negro's case, it's completely justified. As odd as it is to call someone who just led a team to 56 wins a bad coach, he's a bad coach. At least, he's as bad as a coach can be and still have that much success.

Don't take my word for it. Del Negro is one of the punching bags of the NBA press corps, and for good reason. Brett Koremenos, an NBA analyst for ESPN's Grantland.com, has been watching Del Negro for years and has come to the conclusion that he is, to put it gently, not good at his job.

"I would say over the course of the regular season he improved a little bit, instead of being God-awful like he was his first few years," Koremenos said. "I think there was a complete implosion in this series."

The Memphis series displayed Del Negro's worst tendencies: his predictable offense, and his mystifying decisions about whom to play.

The playing-time problems are the easiest to see. In Game 6 against Memphis, Jamal Crawford, the Clippers' third-leading scorer in the regular season, played 12 minutes, and not at all in the second half. During the televised news conference after the game, when Del Negro was asked why Crawford didn't play more, he said, "No real reason. It was just the way the game went."

When Del Negro likes a player, performance becomes irrelevant. Chauncey Billups shot 30 percent from the field during the series and had more turnovers than assists. He killed any chance at a Clippers comeback in Game 6 when he dribbled the ball off his foot, under minimal defensive pressure, late in the fourth quarter.

Yet Billups played 19 minutes a game, and Eric Bledsoe, who contributed far more when he was on the court, played 16.

Del Negro's big-man rotation was equally bizarre. Lamar Odom, Grant Hill and Ronny Turiaf, who are not dependable NBA players anymore, got big minutes, as did Ryan Hollins, who has never been a dependable NBA player.

A lot of those minutes came at the expense of starting center DeAndre Jordan. Jordan is a raw talent and he's probably overpaid. But he's far and away the best center the Clippers have.

Jordan's problem is the same as Bledsoe's: the coach lacks confidence in him and feels safer playing a veteran, even if that veteran isn't very good anymore.

I can understand why a coach would be more comfortable with veteran players. But at some point, you have to put your best players on the floor and let them prove themselves. Del Negro's job is to prepare Jordan and Bledsoe to play their best. If they're not ready, the coach should be held accountable.

Del Negro's other big problem is his offensive strategy, or lack thereof. The Clippers do run plays, but when they break down, the ball just ends up in Chris Paul's hands with the shot clock running down.

There was a time when rolling the ball out and telling your best player to make something happen was an adequate strategy. But since zone defenses were legalized in 2001, NBA defenses have become far more sophisticated, and the best offenses have followed suit. Teams like the Heat and the Spurs run multiple pick-and-rolls on one possession, double and triple screens away from the ball, and clever ruses to set up their star players as decoys.

The Clippers don't.

They can get away with simplicity, to an extent, because Paul might be the best improviser in the league. But a one-man show can only take them so far.

"In the regular season, there's less practice time and you see more vanilla schemes," Koremenos said. "Things aren't as complicated as they are in the playoffs, when you play the same team five or six times in a row. They know what you're doing and they're ready to counter it and if you're not ready you get exposed, like Vinny Del Negro."

By the time you read this, Del Negro could be the former Clippers coach. It's widely accepted that Paul is the one calling the shots, and if he wants the coach gone, the coach will go. It's not always a great idea to let your star player play general manager, but if that's the result, it's hard to argue with it this time.